Montipora dissolving?

[ScubaSteve]

On Sunday I noticed a spot on my green monti cap that was greener than the others... like super electric green. "Weird" I thought and decided to keep an eye on it since it was isolated to a small "leaf" at the very top of the colony. Monday the spot looked a little bigger but I've seen the monti recover from worse so I left it to see what happens.

This morning I woke up to find the afflicted leaf was split in two, literally, by a weird spongy material. Part of the leaf was just dangling there, being held on by the weird spongy stuff. The skeleton had literally been dissolved in a 1/4" wide path. I pulled the piece off immediately and am confused as all hell. And kind of freaked out in a "Body Snatchers" kinda way...

Take a look at the photo below....
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad114/Nergetic/monti.jpg

You can seen the spongy material by the red arrows. I had pulled the other half of the leaf off before taking the picture trying to figure out what the hell it was. You can see where the growth was dissolving still further up by the green arrow. QQLF?

Has anyone ever seen or heard of something like this?
I'm pretty sure it's not monti nudi's as I've seen those before... this is literally like a sponge.


Checked all my params and they're spot on. Water change 5 days ago and will be doing one tonight. The only system changes I've made recently were switching to a 250W halide (from my 150W) on Saturday (yes, I did reduce the photoperiod so I won't fry everything) and I added a monti frag Friday night (which was dipped with CoralRX).

Lately my monti's have been imploding...
Sunset frag - Dead
Orenji - Dead
Large Undata -Had a spell of STN and is now recovering
Red Digitata - One branch STNing (due to a paly colony being dropped on it by a ****ed off clownfish)

All of my other Monti's are doing fine. I don't know if the STNing digitata triggered something in the others but something strange is going on here.

[cuz]

No monti nudis??


On Sunday I noticed a spot on my green monti cap that was greener than the others... like super electric green. "Weird" I thought and decided to keep an eye on it since it was isolated to a small "leaf" at the very top of the colony. Monday the spot looked a little bigger but I've seen the monti recover from worse so I left it to see what happens.

This morning I woke up to find the afflicted leaf was split in two, literally, by a weird spongy material. Part of the leaf was just dangling there, being held on by the weird spongy stuff. The skeleton had literally been dissolved in a 1/4" wide path. I pulled the piece off immediately and am confused as all hell. And kind of freaked out in a "Body Snatchers" kinda way...

Take a look at the photo below....
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad114/Nergetic/monti.jpg

You can seen the spongy material by the red arrows. I had pulled the other half of the leaf off before taking the picture trying to figure out what the hell it was. You can see where the growth was dissolving still further up by the green arrow. QQLF?

Has anyone ever seen or heard of something like this?
I'm pretty sure it's not monti nudi's as I've seen those before... this is literally like a sponge.


Checked all my params and they're spot on. Water change 5 days ago and will be doing one tonight. The only system changes I've made recently were switching to a 250W halide (from my 150W) on Saturday (yes, I did reduce the photoperiod so I won't fry everything) and I added a monti frag Friday night (which was dipped with CoralRX).

Lately my monti's have been imploding...
Sunset frag - Dead
Orenji - Dead
Large Undata -Had a spell of STN and is now recovering
Red Digitata - One branch STNing (due to a paly colony being dropped on it by a ****ed off clownfish)

All of my other Monti's are doing fine. I don't know if the STNing digitata triggered something in the others but something strange is going on here.

[ScubaSteve]

Ya, seriousl... I'm like 95% sure it's not MEN but I will inspect all the colonies again. The others that went for a crap did not go in a way that would indicate MEN.

This colony on the other hand has LITERALLY had it's skeleton dissolved. Like, I'm not kidding about this. The white stuff is like a sponge. I've never heard of MEN dissolving or eating a skeleton before.

[shrimpchips]

Did it get all puffy and clear? I've seen it happen here and there in really small isolated spots on my purple monti in my nano, but haven't seen it lately. It made the monti really fragile where the "swelling" occured, and usually it broke off, or a slight motion from my hand or a fish would cause it to flake away.

never really figured out why, but it happend here and there. Not really offering an explanation; just saying I've seen it before too.

Out of curiosity, what's your Mg? When mine got low, the first corals to really show it were the montis.

[ScubaSteve]

Ya, that kinda sounds like that. Kinda goes translucent and spongey, ya? It's really weird... it's like coral cancer.

Actually, I don't know what my Mg is. That's a good question. I should find out.